Communication Strategies

The communication skills that I apply in my everyday life are listening, sending clear messages and understanding. These three communication skills have been beneficial in conducting my communication and maintaining my good personal relationships with other people. Communication is considered as one of the most important activities of man. It is utilized in most of the vital transactions that man does. It is defined as the process of transmitting messages and information from one point to another to convey meaning, achieve understanding, and avoid conflict. Communication is important in various areas of life such as school, community, home and workplace.

    Listening is a communication that I apply in my life and has been beneficial in my personal relationships. The success of an effective communication therefore rests on the receiver who is at the listening end. Listening is part of communication and language arts. There are fights and miscommunications because nobody has the time to listen. This is a very important tool to avoid misconceptions and misunderstandings. Careful listening gives individual good and accurate information. Every individual should develop his or her listening skills.

I can consider myself as a good listener. I tend to always lend my ears to friends and families who would like to share things and experiences. Listening is important in the whole communication process and in maintaining our relationships wherein the two participants are constantly changing roles as listener and as speaker. In a relationship, the two people involved need to listen to one another in order to grow in the relationship and to know each other better.

My personal relationships flourished because of good communication involving effective listening. Listening is of vital importance in personal relationships like friendship and familial relationships for listening enables better understanding of the messages sent by the other person. Imagine if the two participant of a relationship just keep talking and no one listens, it will be chaotic and it does not meet the ends of the communication.
In my personal experience with my friends, listening is important to keep the friendship intact. There was a time when a friend of mine had a serious problem and he told us his problems. I and our other friends were just there to listen as he babbles over and over his problems. We just listen and absorb all his uttered words. We just talk about the problem, listen, offer solutions, had a good laugh afterwards. After the incident, he then felt relieved that he was able to get it all out. Through listening, we were able to help others by allotting some time to listen and lending an ear to friend. Listening is a sign of empathy to other people. It is a manifestation that we care to what the other people will say and we unconsciously send a message that the other person is important to us and is a part of our life.

There was a time wherein I work for sales. The world is full of goods and services that need to be marketed by people to possible clients and customers. There are different sales job, however, they perform common activities and functions. Sales involve selling of goods and services to customers. One of the important skills to a sales person is his or her ability to listen carefully and effectively to different types of persons. Although effective listening is vital to every profession, it is particularly significant to business transactions, especially selling.

Paying attention and listening is also a sign of respect toward others. Whenever we deal with a person and simultaneously talking to a colleague, attend phone calls and look at cell phones from time to time, we send an underlying or nonverbal message that the person we are speaking with is unimportant and is wasting our time. Moreover, when we listen carefully and actively, it sends a message that we make an effort to understand. Thus, the customer gets the feeling of being important as the sales person take the trouble of listening to his problems and situations. This will yield to the personal satisfaction of the customer.

Another important communication skill that I apply in my life is sending out clear messages. One important aspect in the communication process is the sending of messages. However, it is important that the messages that we send to other people is clear and understandable so that the other person will understand the message. The message that a communicator sends can be verbal and non-verbal and it is equally important that these are clear. Sending clear messages is essential in maintaining harmonious personal relationships in order to avoid conflict and misunderstanding.

One instance that sending clear messages applied in my personal relationship is when I was dating. Dating is the critical part of the relationship for this is the stage wherein the two persons are trying to get to know each other better. When we date, we need to send out clear messages to the other person so that the other person will know our intentions and what we want to happen after the dating stage. I dated and made it clear to my dates what I want in a relationship. This way, I do not offend people and do not make them hopeful if I do not like them.

An important skill that is applied in my life is understanding. Understanding is being able to assess and comprehend messages and situations. This particular communication skill is essential in my personal relationships for it enables me to do the right course of action and avoid conflict. This is best applied in my life, especially in my personal relationships.

I am very close to my siblings, I love to see them during the special occasions like thanksgiving and Christmas, and I always look forward to such occasions for me to catch up with them. This past thanksgiving, my siblings promised that we would spend it to our house with our parents and do the catching up in our personal lives. I expected that they will come and waited for them. However, during the last minute preparations for the occasion, one of them called and said that he was not able to make it for he is so busy and needs to attend to many things. I was disappointed however, I understand his situation. I know that there will be occasions that he will missed and there are always another time when we can catch up on each others life. The personal relationship between me and my siblings are stills intact.

In this paper, I have discussed and pointed out how communication is essential in maintaining a harmonious and productive relationship with other people. Communication is a vital process in our everyday lives. We spend most of our time communicating our thoughts and ideas to other people. Communication is an important aspect in our interaction and interpersonal communication with other people. There are three important communication skills that are applied in my life which are listening, sending out clear messages and understanding. These three communication skills are best applied in my life in conducting communication in order to maintain good personal relationships. Listening should not be taken for granted. It can provide important information in different settings. Listening proved to be an integral part of the whole communication process and our communication in our personal relationships, in order to avoid conflict and misunderstanding. Sending out clear messages is also an important aspect of the communication process and is important in maintaining harmonious relationships. This largely helps in avoiding misunderstanding and miscommunication. Lastly, understanding is an essential communication skill in assessing the messages and situations. This largely helps in maintaining personal relationships and avoiding conflict.